Experimental Investigation on a Ceiling Capillary Radiant Heating System

Abstract

In this paper, a radiant heating system is introduced, which was developed based on the model of capillary radiant terminal (CRT) combined with solar thermal energy usage and phase change thermal storage (PCTS) technology. The aim of this work is to investigate the feasibility and the stability of the system that could be applied into residential buildings in the actual construction. The indoor thermal environment based on the tested system is analyzed in this paper. According to the weather condition of Xi'an, the winter average solar insolation and the ambient temperature were 9.14 MJ/m2 and 8.9oC, respectively. The experimental results show that the average heating capacity of the designed system was about 1.08 kW for a typical sunny day in the winter. It was higher than the simulated heating load. As a result, the indoor air temperature reached 18oC, which sufficiently met the requirement of indoor thermal condition. It is also found that the indoor air temperature distributes uniformly and the maximum difference of the vertical temperatures was less than 3.2oC. This indicates that the indoor thermal comfort of the test room can be classified in the comfort level of A.